page_title: Malbork
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Malbork / History of the town / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: American bomber having just released it's bomb-load over the Focke-Wulfe factory in Marienburg.
context_page_description: Malbork is a town in northern Poland, within the historical region of Pomerelia. Situated in the Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999, it was previously assigned to Elbląg Voivodeship. It is the capital of Malbork County and the population was estimated at 38,723, as of 2018.
  Founded in the 13th century by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, the town is noted for its medieval Malbork Castle, built in the 13th Century as the Order's headquarters, which was also the seat of the early modern Polish province of Royal Prussia.
context_section_description: During World War II a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory was set up at the airfield to the east of Marienburg. It was bombed twice by the USAAF in 1943 and 1944. Today the airfield belongs to the 22nd Air Base of the Polish Air Force.
  During the war, the Germans established the Stalag XX-B prisoner of war camp, among the prisoners of which were the British, French, Poles, Belgians and Yugoslavs. Also a forced labour camp was established.
  Near the end of World War II, the city was declared a festung and most of the civilian population fled or were evacuated, with some 4,000 people opting to remain. In early 1945, Marienburg was the scene of fierce battles by the Nazis against the Red Army and was almost completely destroyed. The battle lasted until March 9, 1945. Following the town's military capture by the Red Army, the remaining civilian population disappeared; 1,840 people remain missing. In June 1945, the town was turned over to Polish authorities who had arrived in the town in April and renamed city with its present Polish name, Malbork. The German population of Marienburg that had not fled was expelled. Historic relics of the German-speaking population were destroyed. 
  Half a century later, in 1996, 178 corpses were found in a mass grave in Malbork; another 123 were found in 2005. In October 2008, during excavations for the foundation of a new hotel in Malbork, a mass grave was found containing the remains of 2,116 people, a majority of whom were female. All the dead were said to have been German residents of pre-1945 Marienburg, but they could not be individually identified, nor could the cause of their deaths be definitely established. A Polish investigation concluded that the bodies, along with the remains of some dead animals, may have been buried to prevent the spread of typhus, which was extant in the turmoil at the end of World War II. On August 14, 2009, all the dead people’s remains were buried in a German military cemetery to the west of the town at Stare Czarnowo in Polish Pomerania, not far from the present-day German border.
  In Malbork one can also find a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery with 240 graves, mostly of POWs who died in the area during both wars, especially in the World War II Stalag XX-B camp.
caption: 94th Bomb Group B-17 Flying Fortress targeting the Focke-Wulf factory as described.
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